Word: systemization
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...current grading system limits evaluation of a student's ability to the results of four-hour examinations at the conclusion of each course. Examinations appraise an important skill--the ability to respond to legal problems with speed, accuracy, and endurance, given limited resources and under extreme pressure. They expose to some degree the quantity and quality of a student's preparation, as well as his competence in mastering the first-year curriculum. They also measure such things as how well he feels that day, how well attuned he is to a given professor's expectations, and how well his nerves...
...evaluation system should point out students' weaknesses in time for them to be overcome. The present system never gives the student any feedback about how well or poorly he is doing until it is too late to respond. Apart from the practice exam, there are no points along the way where the student is challenged by quizzes, written work, or group projects. At no point, even after his grades are handed to him, does he receive any constructive guidance about how well he is absorbing the law and what his relative strengths and weaknessse are. A student whose basic problem...
...current grading system rewards those who master it in the first year and punishes those who do not. This is the traditional carrot and stick approach. While such a system has merit in forcing many students to do the disciplined work vital to proficient legal analysis, it has serious drawbacks...
...year is unnecessarily unpleasant and sometimes dehumanizing. Many students decline the challenge and meander through the year, hoping only to get by." Some find themselves distracted by the atmosphere of tension and isolation, and they resent it. Others feel they have no choice but to work toward the system's goal, but they find that that goal--high performance on exams--has only a tangential relationship to their mastery of the law. They find the system of meting out rewards and punishments at the end gratuitous, even insulting...
...current grading system provides almost no incentive to develop over three years of law school. Once awarded, grades become counterproductive for a large segment of the class. For students at the top, grades cease being an incentive, for such students do not have to do as well during the next two years. They have made it into one of the honoraries and are busy with other activities. As for those in the middle and bottom of the class, the school offers little encouragement for development over a two or three year period. Last March, the editors of the Law Review...